To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought from Its Origins to the Modern State of Israel

297 Pages·2009·6.383 MB·English

by  David J. Goldberg

PENGUIN BOOKS
TO THE PROMISED LAND
David J. Goldberg is Senior Rabbi of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue,
London, and is a leading spokesman for Progressive Judaism in the
UK and Europe. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School,
Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin, and received his Rabbinic
Ordination from the Leo Baeck College, London, in 1971.
He worked for a year on a kibbutz between school and university, and was
a volunteer in the Six Day War of 1967. During the 1982 Israeli invasion
of Lebanon, he spent three days in and around besieged Beirut. Increas­
ingly involved over the years with the ‘peace camp’, Goldberg was one of
the small band of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora who nurtured relations
with Palestinians and their Arab supporters, even when contact with the
PLO was officially prohibited under Israeli law. Their efforts eventually
helped to pave the way for the Oslo Accords. He has contributed regu­
larly on Jewish and Israeli topics in The Times, the Guardian, the Independ­
ent and other major newspapers and journals.
With his former colleague, Rabbi John D. Rayner, he co-authored The
Jewish People: Their History and Their Religion, also published by Penguin.

DAVID J. GOLDBERG
TO THE PROMISED LAND
A History of Zionist Thought from Its Origins
to the Modern State of Israel
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 5TZ, England
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published 1996
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Copyright © David J. Goldberg, 1996
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For Rupert and Emily, as promised

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
PART ONE: DIASPORA I
1 The Antecedents of Zionism 3
2 Moses Hess — Returnee to the Fold 12
3 Leo Pinsker and Chibbat Zion 20
4 Theodor Herzl — Founder of a Movement 30
5 Herzl— Paying Court to the Powerful 57
6 Herzl — Literary and Diplomatic Failure 74
7 Achad Ha-Am — Zionism for the Elect 92
8 Nachman Syrkin and Ber Borochov — The Marxist Zionists 113
PART TWO: PALESTINE 135
9 A. D. Gordon - The Religion of Labour 137
10 Rabbi Abraham Kook - Religious Zionism 148
11 Recognizing the Arab Problem’ 158
12 VladimirJabotinsky — From Liberalism to Fascism 173
13 Jabotinsky — Demagogue of the Right 186
14 David Ben-Gurion — From Class to Nation 205
15 Ben-Gurion - The Primacy of the State 217
16 Zionism — The End of Ideology 234
glossary 252
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 255
REFERENCES 2ÖI
INDEX 274

INTRODUCTION
Zionism Is a unique national movement, in that it emerged among a
scattered and disparate people who had little in common apart from
religion and had not lived in what they regarded as their homeland for
nearly two thousand years. It met none of the criteria by which nation­
alism and national movements are usually judged. It was brought to
public notice and given political impetus by emancipated Jews of west­
ern Europe, who were anxious to solve the plight of the Jewish masses
in eastern Europe by large-scale immigration to Palestine. The state
which eventually came into being as a result of their initiative - Israel —
has a population today of over four million Jews, but nearly 60 per cent
of them are of eastern, not European, origin; they immigrated to Israel
from Arab countries — just one of several differences between Zionism
in theory and Zionism in practice.
The word ‘Zionism’ is undoubtedly one of the most emotive in the
political lexicon of the last hundred years. Its opponents use it as a term
of abuse, alongside Nazism or fascism; a 1975 resolution at the United
Nations, subsequently rescinded, equated Zionism with racism. Its sup­
porters compare it to idealistic liberation movements like the Italian
Risorgimento and accuse its critics of being anti-Semites in disguise.
The theory of Zionism — the books, pamphlets, speeches and articles
that constitute Zionist thought — has received little of the sustained
analysis accorded to communism, capitalism, socialism and other ideo­
logies since the French Revolution, yet Zionism in practice — meaning
the state of Israel — has been at the centre of controversy since it was
established in 1948.
There have been numerous books about modern Israel and the his­
tory of Zionism. A public relations, propaganda and (mis)information
industry has put the Arab or Israeli versions of their conflict to gov­
ernments, the international media and the world public. Distinguished
scholars, venal politicians, pen-for-hire journalists — all have entered
the lists on behalf of the Zionist or the Arab cause. The academic and
INTRODUCTION
S •>. •
intellectual integrity of these mercenaries has been one of the casualties
of an intractable dispute that has led to four major wars, two large-scale
campaigns, many smaller engagements and tens of thousands dead and
wounded since 1948. In such a bitter, passionate and tragic conflict,
objectivity is wellnigh impossible, and truth is in the eye of the partisan
beholder.
This is not yet another book to put the Zionist case. I have grown
tired of the repetitive polemic, the endless rehash of stale controversies,
the interminable arguments about who-did-what-when and where the
blame lies, that surround discussion of Israel and the Middle East situ­
ation. My interest is in Zionism as a history of ideas — the intellectual,
social and political currents that shaped individuals and their theories,
and how those ideas were adapted and modified by application and ex­
perience: the translation of theory into practice. This book tries to ana­
lyse the major strands of Zionist thought, through pen portraits of the
men who fashioned them. As such, it is the first full-length sÇudy of its
kind that I know of, certainly in English, and its occasionally irreverent
judgements may discomfort those who prefer to view the architects of
Zionist thought - Herzl, Achad Ha-Am, Ber Borochov, A. D. Gordon et
al — through the rose-coloured spectacles of ‘official’ Zionist texts and
biographies. If Herzl, the flimsiest of the theoreticians, appears to re­
ceive disproportionate attention, it is because without his contribution
the Zionist movement would not have come into being and Zionism
would have faded as a wan fantasy.
I made use of the work of many authors in composing this book;
they are acknowledged in the bibliography. But if any one work was in
my mind while writing, it was the late Edmund Wilson’s superb study
of the socialist tradition in European thought, To the Finland Station. I
can still remember my excitement when reading it at university over
thirty years ago, and in conscious tribute to it, and in the modest hope
that I may have invested Zionist ideology and its progenitors with a
little of the verve and lively insight Wilson brought to Karl Marx and
socialism, I chose the title of this book: To the Promised Land.
During the fraught and divisive decade of Likud government in
Israel under Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, it was a tiresome
necessity to have to parade one’s Zionist and pro-Israel credentials
before daring to criticize aspects of policy such as treatment of the Pal­
estinians or the West Bank settlement programme. Those of us who felt